Dengeki Online has gone up with a new preview of Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment, providing a first look at Silica in the upcoming PS Vita game.

Silica isn’t the only heroine besides Asuna and Filia joining appearing in the game. Leafa, Lisbeth, Yui, Sinon, and Strea will appear, too.

And speaking of Filia, a new character Kirito encounters in Aincrad’s unexplored “Hollow Area,” she appears to be an “Orange Player”—someone who commits a crime, like player killing, in Sword Art Online.

Also in Dengeki’s preview, we get a look at an area with floating operation console displays and the boss battle “Detonator The Kobold Load.”

And here’s a event scene shot of Leafa and Sinon at the hot spring.

Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment is due out for PS Vita in Japan on April 24 for 6,170 yen. A 9,980 yen limited edition will also be released.

This has a better chance of getting localized than Phantasy Star games, right?

Wolf Star

Since Sword Art Online is already dubbed and is on TV now (US) the game should be coming over as well.

jujubee88

Oh, okay. There’s a very high chance than. ^^

..Wait, Namco Bandai is publishing. Hmmm.

http://www.cubiz.tk/ Auragar

Namdai = No localization.

Wolf Star

NIS America = localizes everything… Soo 50/50 chance?? XD

http://www.cubiz.tk/ Auragar

NISA? Why them?

Wolf Star

I don’t know, I guessed lol

Renaldi Saputra

but not Namdai’s exclusive titles also anime adaptation games

and NISA “almost” localize everything..
they didn’t do monster monpiece from CH

Wolf Star

Yeah.. That’s going to be a tough one.. I like Namco but with localization issue they keep having.. well it’s a 50/50 chance now.

Budgiecat

12 people got Saint Seiya to be localized to the U.S. at a comic-con convention when a rep from Namco was there. They just simply asked.

Eric Pena

Agree

http://www.cubiz.tk/ Auragar

Being on TV doesn’t really increase it’s chances. Or else we’d have gotten the Digimon game.

jujubee88

The SOA anime is hotter than Digimon from what I can tell.

http://www.cubiz.tk/ Auragar

That is true enough.

Renaldi Saputra

what did you mean “hotter”?

Budgiecat

Maybe they mean ‘more popular now’

but hindsight is often 20/20. Digimon had more than a few localized games back in it’s heyday.

Renaldi Saputra

true but SAO is only popular among animelovers or otaku.. meanwhile digimon’s target audience is bigger (note that ppl 12++ still watch it)

Budgiecat

Yeah but you’re still dealing with people that are making these decisions and not always are they smart decisions…

Renaldi Saputra

what do u mean?

Budgiecat

I mean the corporate heads that make the decision to localize or to not localize aren’t always making the wisest decisions

Renaldi Saputra

seems I agree

Wolf Star

Hmm ok well it depends if Namco wants to Localize it or not. ( and of course.. We will never going to get Digimon Redigitize recode on the 3DS) that’s why I don’t like Nintnedo and their region lock. US just like shooters -__- like a lot lol.

http://www.cubiz.tk/ Auragar

Which they don’t. They localize weird meh games.

Wolf Star

Yeah, the only thing I like about Namco is Tales of series and Ni No Kuni other than that.. “Meh”

Renaldi Saputra

why we will never get Decode?
The digimon world trademark had been registered and it’s ready. Meanwhile we haven’t seen any of SAO gaming trademark

Budgiecat

We’re getting JoJo and we got Saint Seiya and Fist of the North Star

Renaldi Saputra

they’re part of Jump Shueisha, but SAO isn’t

Budgiecat

what difference does that make So is Bobobo but we never got any of his games despite his show airing CN…

and we also got Space Adventure Cobra…

Renaldi Saputra

we never get gurren lagann games even if it’s popular in US.. that’s an example for this

Budgiecat

Gurren is not really popular as a matter of fact I dont think the popularity of the Anime is an ultimate decisive matter. Like I said, Cobra, Saint Seiya, JoJo and iIst of the North Star got localized and their shows were never popular in the U.S.

It all boils down to whoever just decides to green light it.

Bandai was supposed to localize the Cowboy Bebop PS2 game as the show was extremely popular in the U.S. but canceled it.

Capcom was actually going to localize the Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure Golden Wind PS2 game but canceled it only due to Araki refusing to change the character names due to celebrity copyrights

Renaldi Saputra

if that so, then, well, still, it needs a harder struggle..

Budgiecat

hi

Willgaea

Depends on how well it sells. Hopefully it sells 200k+.

http://www.cubiz.tk/ Auragar

Probably needs to sell far more than that for a western release.

rekka_zan

*cough*Monster Hunter Portable 3rd*cough*

Budgiecat

Capcom just makes weird business decisions.

DMC4 sells the most out of all the DMC’s at around 2.79 million worldwide, so what do they do? They decide to reboot the series, give it to a crap developer and then are surprised when the title doesn’t even reach a million in sales (879k)

rekka_zan

And made BoF6 a mobile game. Yay. :))

Budgiecat

Whyd you remind me

Renaldi Saputra

sells doesn’t affect, like summon night and medarot

and it won’t be 200k++ first week, since the PSP only sold 130k and this game are using the PSP battle system only with some changing and improvements..

also the hype isn’t high now

Budgiecat

It’s certainly a motivator. 400k sales of JJBA ASB certainly helped push to get it localized.

120k sales of Xenoblade Chronicles in Japan certainly did not motivate Nintendo to jump right onto localizing it until after so many people begged and despite it only being available at one store in limited quantities (Gamestop), it sold over 400K in the U.S. alone and 220K in EU.

Renaldi Saputra

but can SAO game sell with that number? impossible.. from what I can expect, it could be lower than 100k, considering there’s still fewer Vita users than PSP

Budgiecat

Nobody cares about PSP in the West anymore. If there’s a game to be released on a Sony handheld in the West these days, it’d be the Vita, not the PSP.

Renaldi Saputra

I mean, the PSP sales first week was around 130k, and total sales now is around 220k. I don’t think the Vita will sell around 130k again first week..
For example, Re:digitize sales was 87k first week, and total now is around 215k, but when Decode 3DS got released, even with its high improvements, only got 33k sales first week and total around 80k now..

bcos, some many ppl had got disappointed in the game

Budgiecat

I’m talking about localization sales

Renaldi Saputra

and what I asked is, can SAO: HF sell more than its PSP game in Japan so it can evoke the localization?

I doubt it

Budgiecat

It doesn’t matter because its still PSP sales which mean nothing because no one cares about PSP sales in the West. All that matters is can it sell in the West in the eyes of the publishers. Is there a legit demand for it etc. PSP sales mean dick its not transferable since PSP is dead in the West. Thats how they’re gonna look at it. As far as Vita, if it sells well then that can help push the decision but its not an absolute. In the end it still is based on the decision of whoever is in charge and how they think or predict the sales could be.

Willgaea

There are people who buy more than one copy, and people who buy games for consoles they don’t own. I owned vesperia a month before getting a 360.

Renaldi Saputra

but the question is, can they surpass their sales of PSP games? nah I doubt it, many ppl hated the IM games so they don’t want another SAO games with more or less same system like IM

http://www.cubiz.tk/ Auragar

No… not really.

Renaldi Saputra

even the opposite.. phantasy star games are somewhat higher although both are close to 0 chance of localization

Luna Kazemaru

i’m actually fine with a bad phantasy star game like pso2 not happening

Renaldi Saputra

how come it’s that bad?

https://twitter.com/GaleGlory89 KiQun

Kobold Load??? MMO-wise, it should be Lord.

drproton

And he released 3 years worth of kobold loads with glopping sounds.

Zackasaur

I can only play this if it is localised, so I’ll be really bummed if it never is. :/ I love Sword Art Online, but not enough to struggle with a game I cannot understand.

PrinceHeir

seeing this reminds me that we really need a new .hack game or at least an HD Collection.